William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood. Learn how science is done from a classic film

First-year students confined to their living quarters and online teaching by the resurgence of covid-19 would do well to watch the film, William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood. This classic, filmed in 1971-72 for the Royal College of Physicians, was itself a third remake of the same title; the original version was made in 1928 to celebrate the publication of Harvey’s De Motu Cordis three hundred years earlier with another version in 1957 for the tercentenary of Harvey’s death. The history of the three versions is explained in the third version, with the first being the idea of Sir Thomas Lewis FRS (1881-1945) and Sir Henry Dale FRS (1875-1968).

In overthrowing the teachings of the ancient anatomists he had been fed while studying at the University of Padua, William Harvey established the circulation of the blood and the working of the heart not simply by positing from anatomical observations but by experiment. But, as the film shows, he used ways of thought that are still essential for knowledge to advance today.

The student or anybody else watching this film learns the importance of:

• Experiments that are simple, direct and, therefore, elegant
• The value of taking a comparative approach—gaining knowledge from a variety of organisms in order to test a generality
• Armchair physiology—using simple quantitative data to test competing hypotheses
• Using a mechanical analogy—the heart as a fire engine pump is an example
• Knowing the  historical literature in detail
• Travel to see and hear current thinking in different centres of excellence

The full version can be found HERE on the Wellcome Foundation website. The Wellcome provided the financial support needed to make the film. There are somewhat shorter versions also online but the few extra minutes are well worth watching.

William Harvey was a great scientist before the word was invented and a true exponent of Nullius in Verba thirty years before the Royal Society was founded.

The film was directed, produced and photographed by Douglas Fisher FRPS for the Royal College of Physicians. Douglas Fisher had made films for the Wellcome Foundation and is remembered for his filming for Granada Television’s Zoo Time in the 1950s, and for his later wildlife films.

The writers and researchers for this version were the historian Gweneth Whitteridge (1910-1993), Charles Edward Newman FRCP (1900-1989) and Leonard Maslin Payne (1911-2000), Librarian at the Royal College of Physicians. Harvey’s experiments were reconstructed by Michael de Burgh Daly (1922-2002) who was Professor of Physiology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital medical school and Leonard George Goodwin FRS (1915-2008) then Director of Science at the Zoological Society of London. Len Goodwin also read the words of William Harvey, translated from the Latin, for the soundtrack.

Quaint and redolent of instructional films of the middle decades of the 20th century, this classic is now nearly 50 years old. Shall we see fourth version, this time using video and computer graphic simulations, for the 400th anniversary of De Motu Cordis in 2028?